Elevated social status was clearly not a benefit of being a high school-aged school bus driver. We were all working class boys and girls, neither wealthy nor poor. We didn't do a lot to stand out and, in fact, I think we were none of us particularly extroverts then. Our number included no cheerleaders, no jocks, and maybe no National Merit scholars. Although most of us were from middle class homes our school job, indeed that we had a job at all, relegated us to the working class of East Mecklenburg High School.
I suppose there were four perquisites to being a high school-aged school bus driver. These were: we had fun; we enjoyed a fraternal camaraderie amongst our number; we enjoyed a semester of skipping two academic periods daily; and we learned to very capably wheel about town and country in 45 to 50 feet long 22 ton trucks. Driving a school bus adequately, or well, was critical to remaining employed and also benefited us with improved driving skills, if not with particularly improved social skills.
Most of us went on to university. I know of none who excelled in their studies after high school. We soldiered on though, and I think we shared a strong work ethic. We were up and warming our buses in the mornings before even the most ambitious future cosmetologists had even faced their mirror for the first time that day. We slogged through rush hour traffic every afternoon getting the buses back to our part of town. Before the bus engine had even cooled we’d picked up the litter and swept inside. Some drivers kept windex and polishing cloths for the interior glass surfaces. We all kept our buses neat. While it was expected of us, no one needed monitor this because we all took pride in keeping up our buses. None of us became professional drivers although some went on to summer jobs driving dump trucks or even later became drivers of fire department pumpers.
We learned to maneuver the buses around, including backing them, under constant pressures. The county expressed zero tolerance for known driving mishaps, whether in one’s private vehicle or in the county’s buses. The image of a wrecked or damaged school bus was not something parents or school board members wanted to see or hear about. Whether the bus was empty or not didn’t matter, the potential hazard loomed large. So we didn’t have driving mishaps. Our passengers were elementary kids, junior high kids and high schoolers, sometimes two loads every morning and evening. It’s really amazing in so many ways that a bunch of 16 and 17 year olds can safely drive thousands of miles monthly in Charlotte traffic, with 50 living yelling distractions in the bus and countless things going on outside.
With the bus drivers I associated with, the bus driving fraternity was the best part. There were some but not many girls driving buses, so we brought in some other people to our tight-knit group. We double dated, partied together, got together on weekends and helped each other out. We fit together pretty well, had some things we could relate on, and that was enough chemistry for a bunch of awkward high school boys. It was through this association I got to know John Marett.
I have a few memories with John that really stand out. One was his girlfriend. Gina was the only bus driver one of us dated, I think, and because of her dad only one of us was brave enough to date her. It was John Marett who braved the weekly encounter with Mr. Campbell so he could date Gina. According to John, Mr. Campbell was a terror, threatening bodily harm to her date if anything at all happened to his daughter and even if it didn’t. He may have been much nicer than John reported to us although I doubt John was being disingenuous. Still, this effectively dulled our interest in competing with John for his girl.
Another memory was the camping trip five of us took up to Wiseman’s View. It was almost a three-hour drive from our part of Charlotte, riding in Bill’s 1955 Fordline sedan. We didn’t get away early so the skies were dark when we arrived to the dirt road leading to our camping area atop the Linville Gorge. Worse, the fog was as thick as pea soup. We couldn’t see twenty feet in front of us. I know now this is not uncommon but we were very surprised and put out by it. The only solution was for John to walk point in front of the car, just in view of the headlights, and keep Bill from driving the car down into Linville Gorge. It made for slow going but I was terrifically grateful to John for taking that dangerous assignment, walking into the unknown and trying to discern the track for the car. I guess since I’ve always been a camper and hiker the camping itself was just another great camping trip. But I’ll always remember calm John walking us through the fog.
Just as kids have always done, I suppose, we would hang out at whomever’s house was without parents. It seems there was always one whose parents were absent for the weekend so we partied safely indoors in great comfort. One weekend night about the time we were graduating high school, John and Ralph’s parents were off somewhere. And John had the brand new Emerson Lake and Palmer album, Tarkus. Some ELP songs have tremendous dynamic range and, like listening to The Who’s Magic Bus undistorted at full volume in Bill’s Fordline, Tarkus is (was) just a blast to listen to that way.
The Marett’s had a hi fi in the living room that was equal to our wishes. I don’t remember the stereo but Mr. Marett must have been someone who really appreciated high fidelity. John put on the Tarkus lp and joined us sitting on the carpet, leaning against the sofa, staring at the wall in front of us while we listened to the epic story of a war machine named Tarkus destroying a creature born from an egg beside an erupting volcano, then dramatically battling several other monstrous creatures. I’m not at all sure we got all that but the drama telegraphed by ELP’s very enlightened performance reverberated so strongly on the living room’s walls a picture suddenly crashed to the floor. This accentuated perfectly the intensity of our experience just then, and we never forgot the episode. Listening to albums can be so ho hum sometimes. Then other times. . .
John seemed more intense than the rest of us. He was always thoughtful, quiet and serious, far more than any of the rest of us. I remember vividly one day when John was just spitting mad and spouting off. He was ready to maim the idiot who had rolled Sherry Thomas’s yard and had left some pejorative epithets spelled out on the lawn. Sherry was a friend of mine, we sat beside each other in contemporary lit class. The rest of us never knew whether John was friends with Larry and Sherry or if there was more, but he was furious. Luckily, the culprit was never outed.
The last time the bus drivers united was late 1980s or so. Abe Craddock invited a bunch of our bus driver gang to his and Mary Ann’s ginormous house in Hembstead, near Providence Plantation in Charlotte. It was so surprising to see John there after not seeing him or hearing anything for so long. The others had stayed in North Carolina so we’d seen each other some. Since I’d been carpentering for home builders in Chapel Hill, Sylva and then Asheville, John and I had some things to share since he was by then a home builder. We talked about little else.
The others from the Weisman’s View camping trip, Bill Hines, Abe Craddock, and John have passed, Jeff Bergen has disappeared to the West Coast and, I think passed too. Sherry Thomas' passing prompted me to try and track down John and I learned he had passed also.
James Mitchell (Jim) Cocke
Elevated social status was clearly not a benefit of being a high school-aged school bus driver. We were all working class boys and girls, neither wealthy nor poor. We didn't do a lot to stand out and, in fact, I think we were none of us particularly extroverts then. Our number included no cheerleaders, no jocks, and maybe no National Merit scholars. Although most of us were from middle class homes our school job, indeed that we had a job at all, relegated us to the working class of East Mecklenburg High School.
I suppose there were four perquisites to being a high school-aged school bus driver. These were: we had fun; we enjoyed a fraternal camaraderie amongst our number; we enjoyed a semester of skipping two academic periods daily; and we learned to very capably wheel about town and country in 45 to 50 feet long 22 ton trucks. Driving a school bus adequately, or well, was critical to remaining employed and also benefited us with improved driving skills, if not with particularly improved social skills.
Most of us went on to university. I know of none who excelled in their studies after high school. We soldiered on though, and I think we shared a strong work ethic. We were up and warming our buses in the mornings before even the most ambitious future cosmetologists had even faced their mirror for the first time that day. We slogged through rush hour traffic every afternoon getting the buses back to our part of town. Before the bus engine had even cooled we’d picked up the litter and swept inside. Some drivers kept windex and polishing cloths for the interior glass surfaces. We all kept our buses neat. While it was expected of us, no one needed monitor this because we all took pride in keeping up our buses. None of us became professional drivers although some went on to summer jobs driving dump trucks or even later became drivers of fire department pumpers.
We learned to maneuver the buses around, including backing them, under constant pressures. The county expressed zero tolerance for known driving mishaps, whether in one’s private vehicle or in the county’s buses. The image of a wrecked or damaged school bus was not something parents or school board members wanted to see or hear about. Whether the bus was empty or not didn’t matter, the potential hazard loomed large. So we didn’t have driving mishaps. Our passengers were elementary kids, junior high kids and high schoolers, sometimes two loads every morning and evening. It’s really amazing in so many ways that a bunch of 16 and 17 year olds can safely drive thousands of miles monthly in Charlotte traffic, with 50 living yelling distractions in the bus and countless things going on outside.
With the bus drivers I associated with, the bus driving fraternity was the best part. There were some but not many girls driving buses, so we brought in some other people to our tight-knit group. We double dated, partied together, got together on weekends and helped each other out. We fit together pretty well, had some things we could relate on, and that was enough chemistry for a bunch of awkward high school boys. It was through this association I got to know John Marett.
I have a few memories with John that really stand out. One was his girlfriend. Gina was the only bus driver one of us dated, I think, and because of her dad only one of us was brave enough to date her. It was John Marett who braved the weekly encounter with Mr. Campbell so he could date Gina. According to John, Mr. Campbell was a terror, threatening bodily harm to her date if anything at all happened to his daughter and even if it didn’t. He may have been much nicer than John reported to us although I doubt John was being disingenuous. Still, this effectively dulled our interest in competing with John for his girl.
Another memory was the camping trip five of us took up to Wiseman’s View. It was almost a three-hour drive from our part of Charlotte, riding in Bill’s 1955 Fordline sedan. We didn’t get away early so the skies were dark when we arrived to the dirt road leading to our camping area atop the Linville Gorge. Worse, the fog was as thick as pea soup. We couldn’t see twenty feet in front of us. I know now this is not uncommon but we were very surprised and put out by it. The only solution was for John to walk point in front of the car, just in view of the headlights, and keep Bill from driving the car down into Linville Gorge. It made for slow going but I was terrifically grateful to John for taking that dangerous assignment, walking into the unknown and trying to discern the track for the car. I guess since I’ve always been a camper and hiker the camping itself was just another great camping trip. But I’ll always remember calm John walking us through the fog.
Just as kids have always done, I suppose, we would hang out at whomever’s house was without parents. It seems there was always one whose parents were absent for the weekend so we partied safely indoors in great comfort. One weekend night about the time we were graduating high school, John and Ralph’s parents were off somewhere. And John had the brand new Emerson Lake and Palmer album, Tarkus. Some ELP songs have tremendous dynamic range and, like listening to The Who’s Magic Bus undistorted at full volume in Bill’s Fordline, Tarkus is (was) just a blast to listen to that way.
The Marett’s had a hi fi in the living room that was equal to our wishes. I don’t remember the stereo but Mr. Marett must have been someone who really appreciated high fidelity. John put on the Tarkus lp and joined us sitting on the carpet, leaning against the sofa, staring at the wall in front of us while we listened to the epic story of a war machine named Tarkus destroying a creature born from an egg beside an erupting volcano, then dramatically battling several other monstrous creatures. I’m not at all sure we got all that but the drama telegraphed by ELP’s very enlightened performance reverberated so strongly on the living room’s walls a picture suddenly crashed to the floor. This accentuated perfectly the intensity of our experience just then, and we never forgot the episode. Listening to albums can be so ho hum sometimes. Then other times. . .
John seemed more intense than the rest of us. He was always thoughtful, quiet and serious, far more than any of the rest of us. I remember vividly one day when John was just spitting mad and spouting off. He was ready to maim the idiot who had rolled Sherry Thomas’s yard and had left some pejorative epithets spelled out on the lawn. Sherry was a friend of mine, we sat beside each other in contemporary lit class. The rest of us never knew whether John was friends with Larry and Sherry or if there was more, but he was furious. Luckily, the culprit was never outed.
The last time the bus drivers united was late 1980s or so. Abe Craddock invited a bunch of our bus driver gang to his and Mary Ann’s ginormous house in Hembstead, near Providence Plantation in Charlotte. It was so surprising to see John there after not seeing him or hearing anything for so long. The others had stayed in North Carolina so we’d seen each other some. Since I’d been carpentering for home builders in Chapel Hill, Sylva and then Asheville, John and I had some things to share since he was by then a home builder. We talked about little else.
The others from the Weisman’s View camping trip, Bill Hines, Abe Craddock, and John have passed, Jeff Bergen has disappeared to the West Coast and, I think passed too. Sherry Thomas' passing prompted me to try and track down John and I learned he had passed also.